Day 12 - Sending Mails

We have already put together an archive in one of the previous doors. We would now like to be able to send this archive by email with the click of a button. To do this, we create a button in the mail portal.

When the button is pressed, a dialog is displayed. In this dialog we then set our text and our subject. In addition, we would like to have three buttons here with which we can either Cancel, Send the mail without archive attachment or Send with archive.

To create the dialog we use the functions from the dialog area. With these functions we can freely design our dialog. We can add buttons and fields and even display an icon to give the dialog a nicer look.

	Day 11 - Know Your Way

Today we are already on day 11 of our advent calendar. Our little monkey would like to take a look at the region where the recipients live. The best way to do this is to take a look at the map. MBS has the MapView functions for Mac and iOS to display maps from Apple Maps.

To do this, we mark the position where we want to display our map with a rectangle. We name this rectangle Map. Now we want to create our map. We can either use the MapView.CreateWithSize function to place the map with a specific size at specific coordinates on the screen or we can use the MapView.CreateWithControl function and place our map on a control that we have previously placed on your layout. We want to place our map on our rectangle with the name Map. So we use the second option. In the function, we first specify the window in which we want to create this map. As we want to place the button in the same window in which we want to display the map and the window must be the frontmost one, we can enter a 0 for the window index, followed by the name of the control on which we want to place the map. Optionally, we can now enter x and y values by an amount that we would like to move the map in relation to the control. We don't want to do this, so we will leave it out.

Set Variable [ $$Mapview ; Value: MBS("MapView.CreateWithControl"; 0; "Map") ]

Now that we have a map, we want to display the customer's address on the map. To do this, we use the MapView.ShowAddress function to set the focus of our map on the address. In this function, we first enter our Mapview reference and then our address, which we have put together from the street, city, state and country, separated by commas. But we don't just want to display the address, we also want to mark it with a picture of our monkey. We already have this image in the global variable $$Overlay_Image. To mark the point of the address on the map, we use the function MapView.AddPoint. We pass this function a JSON with the information about this point. We have already seen how a JSON is structured on day 8. Now we create new information in an empty object with the functions JSON.AddStringToObject and JSON.AddNumberToObject. In these two functions, we first specify the JSON object to which we want to add the information and then the key and the value. In our case, we want to specify the address, the title of the annotation, the image of the annotation and the size of this image in the JSON. For our title, we take the first and last name. The title is displayed next to the icon when we move the mouse over it. The part of the script then looks like this:

	Day 10 - Reading The Wish List

Welcome to Door 10. A few days have passed since we sent out our wish list forms and the first wish lists are slowly rolling in. It's time for us to incorporate readout into our solution. For this reason, we first create a container in which we can place the file to read it out and create a new script. Since we also need DynaPDF here, we must first initialize it. Then we load the file from the container into a newly created working environment as we have already seen in the previous doors.

If [ MBS("DynaPDF.IsInitialized")=0 ]
	Perform Script [ Specified: From list ; “InitDynaPDF” ; Parameter:    ]
End If
# 
Set Variable [ $pdf ; Value: MBS("DynaPDF.New") ]
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS("DynaPDF.OpenPDFFromContainer"; $pdf; Giftee::WishlistIn) ]
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS("DynaPDF.ImportPDFFile"; $pdf) ]

	Day 9 - Archives

Our monkey likes to have things together in a compact form. For this reason, it also likes archives and would like to have the option of creating an archive from the children's information and the individual files in the portal. We want to implement this now.

	Day 8 - Weather data with JSON

Today is day 8 of our advent calendar and winter is getting a bit chilly for our monkey. To avoid any surprises at Christmas, he wants to be able to call up the current temperature and weather conditions for each customer in FileMaker.

We would like to retrieve the weather data from a weather database. The weather data can be found on the website openweathermap.org. A few years ago we already made a video about how we implement this with FileMaker nativ functions. Today I would like to show you how this works with the JSON functions of MBS. These have the advantage that they can work very quickly, even with large amounts of data.

	Door 7 - Open Files With Roundabout Route Via Temporary Files

Welcome to day 7 of our advent calendar. Today we would like to add a function to our document portal from day 3. So far we can add documents to this portal via drag and drop, what we are missing now is the possibility to open them from FileMaker.

To do this, we use the MBS function Files.LaunchFile. We can pass a path to this function and the file or folder located at this path is then launched with the standard program provided for this purpose.

But we realize now that we have a container value and no path, how do we do this now? You could perhaps come up with the idea of writing the path to a field when reading it in. This procedure becomes problematic, if we move the original file to a new location and the path is no longer correct. So we have to take a different way. We save the file in the temporary folder and display it from there.

To do this, we first create the path where we want to save the file. We determine the temporary folder with the Folders.UserTemporary function. In the Folders area, we also have further functions for other special folders such as Desktop, Applications or Documents.

Once we have the path to this folder, we still need to append the file name with the correct file extension. The file name is made up of the primary key and the file name. The file name already contains the file extension. We now put together this determined file name with the Path.AddPathComponent function, specifying our temporary path in the parameters.

	Door 6 - Sending Out Wishlist Forms

Today it is time for us to take care of the wish lists of the giftees. We want to prepare a form that we send by e-mail to the giftees, who fill out this form. In a later door we can then read this information from our returned document.

To do this, we first create the template we want to send. To do this, we first need a simple PDF file on which we can position our fields. We have the option of either building this form with DynaPDF, or we can use a pre-designed PDF in which we create fields. I chose this method now. The document was created with Pages and then output as a PDF via the print settings. We want to write several labels in this file. The labels are not only important for the labeling, so that the customer knows which data is to be entered there, but also for positioning the form fields. We want to position these behind the labels.

Now we have everything we need to create our template.

Since we are working with DynaPDF, we first have to initialize it again, as we already explained in door 4.

If [ MBS("DynaPDF.IsInitialized")=0 ]
	Perform Script [ Specified: From list ; "InitDynaPDF" ; Parameter:    ]
End If

	Door 5 - Apple Contacts

Today is day 5 of our calendar and our monkey has a few calls to make on his iPhone. He just doesn't want to keep typing in the number and searching for the customer. It would be much easier if he could simply save the specific contacts in Apple Contacts with the touch of a button. That's no problem, because as a Mac user you can read and write data in Apple Contacts. We use our Contacts functions for this.

But before we can start, we first need to be able to assign phone numbers and email addresses to our contacts. Until now, this was very complicated because we had to leave the giftee layout and enter the data in the respective layouts of the tables. We would now like to change this. To do this, we go to our relationship diagram and double-click on the equal sign between our phone and giftee relationship. Then the Edit Relationship dialog opens and we can make settings. Here we can decide whether we can delete or create data records via this relationship. To do this, we can make a choice in the checkboxes at the bottom. We tick Allow creation of records in this table via this relationship and Delete related records in this table when a record is deleted in the other table for the Telphone table. This allows us to create records in our portal and if a gifte is deleted, the associated telephone numbers are also deleted. We now do the same for the mail addresses.

	Door 4 - Add GTC with DynaPDF

Today I would like to show you a tool that you can use in FileMaker with the MBS FileMaker Plugin: DynaPDF. With DynaPDF you have the possibility to create, edit, merge, analyze or sign PDF documents in FileMaker. DynaPDF offers you many possibilities around the topic of PDF.

Our monkey also wants to use one of these functionalities today. Because today we want to build the possibility to attach user terms and conditions to a PDF document. The user terms and conditions always remain the same and can be attached to any outgoing document, e.g. an invoice. I will show you how this works today in this door.

First we have to initialize DynaPDF, which means we have to tell FileMaker where the DynaPDF function library is located. The files are automatically delivered with the download of the plugin and can be found in Examples > DynaPDF. The files have the extension dll and dylib. Which of the files you need depends on your operating system. If you want to use DynaPDF on a Mac, you will need the path to the dynapdf.dylib file. If we are working with Windows, it also depends on whether we are working with a 32 or 64 bit version. If you are using FileMaker 19 or higher, this decision is easy, as only a 64 system can be used here. In any case, the library has the extension .dll. If you are not sure, just put both dll in the same folder and the plugin will grab the file it needs. The next piece of information we need is the DynaPDF license key. If you want to use DynaPDF in your solutions, you need an appropriate DynaPDF license and an MBS FileMaker Plugin license.

There are four different DynaPDF licenses. Which license you need depends mainly on which DynaPDF functions you use. If you need more information, please visit our website to find out which license is right for you. However, we do not necessarily need a license to try it out, but need to live with the watermark. After we have determined the path to the libraries and the license key, if available, we can now call the DynaPDF.Initialize function. In the parameters we first enter the path to the library and then the license key. If we do not yet have a license key, we pass an empty string here.